The image below was abstracted from a new website, “Mapping The [North Carolina] Left”, just unveiled by the folks at our local rightwing “think” tank, the Civitas Institute. It purports to unmask, name and chart the “vast leftwing conspiracy” that it insists has been running the state, notwithstanding the huge rightwing majority in the legislature. Its database names many hundreds of people, groups, and funders.
And despite a lengthy spell of scrolling, I am abashed and embarrassed to report that my name didn’t turn up anywhere on it. Nor did those of the two activist groups I have worked with, one full-time and one part-time, for most of the 13 years I’ve been in Carolina. And dammit, it wasn’t for lack of trying! In fact, I thought they’ve been pretty doggone effective, given that they were devoted to pretty much hopeless causes. But what do I know??
Even getting arrested with Moral Monday wasn’t enough to put me over the line. Though, in an astonishing feat of detection, the Civitas anti-subversive sleuths DID discover and include MM on their roster of radicals. (Rev. William Barber, you are SOOO Busted!)
I think my downfall, and that of the missing groups, was not to have found our way onto the foundation grantmakers’ gravy train, where the goal is to manufacture the appearance of “action” and “awareness,” sufficient to keep the grant checks coming in, never mind what’s actually happening “on the ground”, especially if the “ground” is outside the Triangle. Because a close look at the lists here makes it evident that it is this subculture which is mainly being tracked here. Oh well, the groups I’ve been with mainly missed out on all that; we were too busy doing stuff, I think, on a shoestring.
At any rate, the site features pages on which variously-colored circles are superimposed on one another, with spidery gray lines identifying their “links” and connections. That’s what you see here. And as is also visible, the “connections” and networks” are so thick that one would think we could hardly walk a block in the state without stumbling over several of them.
Indeed, so thick is this graphic “infrastructure,” that one comes away wondering how it is possible that there are any right-wingers left anywhere in Tarheel Territory at all. If these pointillist charts prove anything, it must be that a clear majority of Carolina’s registered voters (with acceptable ID) are working for George Soros, or a Soros-funded subsidiary.
But lest I be thought to approach this massive work of, um, research with less than proper reverence, let me hasten to say that it clearly has one major usefulness, even for the few hapless lefties not already ensconced in the plush web of foundation-funded luxury it unveils.
Namely, it offers the longest list I have seen of grant makers and the largesse they’ve been allegedly showering on our “progressive” groups over the last several years.
Which means Civitas has graced all us insurgents with a survival gold mine. Whether you’re already part of the grant-enabled “left,” or one of those strays laboring under the illusion that times are hard for progressives, here is a nearly bottomless prospect list for keeping things going until your ship does come in.
Don’t look a gift horse in the mouth, Dude; get busy.
The website is here:
More about it on the Indy Week blog: